Tony Blair sug­gests a sec­ond ref­er­en­dum to re­verse Brexit

FOR­MER Bri­tish Prime Min­is­ter Tony Blair says Bri­tain should keep its “op­tions open” on whether or not to leave the Euro­pean Union un­til af­ter Brexit talks with the bloc are com­pleted.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view on Fri­day with BBC Ra­dio 4’s “To­day” pro­gram, Blair de­scribed the EU ref­er­en­dum as “a catas­tro­phe” and said UK vot­ers should be given the op­tion of a sec­ond EU ref­er­en­dum.

Bri­tain should not with­draw from the EU un­til it be­comes clearer how Brexit would im­pact UK’s eco­nomic, so­cial and cul­tural fu­ture, Blair said.

“The bizarre thing about this ref­er­en­dum is that we took a de­ci­sion but we still don’t know the pre­cise terms,” he said. “There’s got to be some way, ei­ther through par­lia­ment, or through an elec­tion, pos­si­bly through an­other ref­er­en­dum, that peo­ple ex­press their view.”

The for­mer pre­mier, who was in of­fice from 1997 un­til 2007, said it should be pos­si­ble for the pub­lic to switch their ver­dict if it be­comes clear the al­ter­na­tive ne­go­ti­ated by Prime Min­is­ter Theresa May is go­ing to be worse.

Blair’s ar­gu­ment con­trasts sharply with that of May, who has re­peat­edly said that “Brexit means Brexit” and that she’ll re­spect the ref­er­en­dum re­sult. Blair had ar­gued that Bri­tain should stay in the EU be­fore the ref­er­en­dum.

Eco­nomic growth in the UK is ex­pected to slow sig­nif­i­cantly next year, due to un­cer­tainty over of the Brexit vote.

Ex­perts have warned that leav­ing the EU will se­verely hurt Lon­don’s po­si­tion as a fi­nan­cial hub, un­less the UK de­cides to keep its ac­cess to the sin­gle EU mar­ket by loos­en­ing its stance on im­mi­gra­tion. — Press.